Royal Highland Show

And when, when was it you got into the Ryelands?

It was Andrew, um, quite a long time ago at the Highland Show, him and some of his pals, the McCornicks from Bothwell and Wigtonshire.

I don't know if you know them or not, but they were there at the Highland Show.

They just, they saw these wooly sheep being led round on halters and said, "We fancy having some of them."

Right.

Mm-hmm.

And that was fine.

Took it to the Highland Show next year not really knowing what we were doing, you know, and he was champion with it.

And I'm really, I'm really, really pleased.

I have, you kind of first came onto my radar when you spoke at the Women in Agriculture Breakfast in 2025 at the Highland Show.

And I was like, she's somebody I really want on the podcast.

But I also knew that Immediately after that probably wasn't quite the right time.

Yeah, it's the networking.

Yeah.

Whether that's coming on a podcast or whether it's speaking at the Highland Show or whatever, you know, step beyond your comfort zone because the rewards will be there for you.

So that's fantastic.

way

and we went for years and we placed in every class and sometimes won classes but never got anything in the Clydesdales and Edward Martin one year got us to go down and we worked with him for the best part of six weekends And then at the Highland Show, he struck to both of us.

And the shoemaking class, I won and Derek was second.

And the shoeing class, Derek won and I was second.

And really, it's about kind of supporting rural youth, um helping to educate rural youth and just providing sort of safe spaces for members to to meet up to socialize to have competitions to learn to you know um yeah basically personally develop the personal development stuff is is huge i mean speech making is a great example of that uh things like stock judging as well which which on the face of it, you might be tempted to say is a sort of, you know, I was saying that's like, that can be an entry point for young kids.

But if you go to the Highland Show and you see the white coats going around on a Saturday morning, there's 150, 200 competitors going around and, you know, they do their stock judging and then they have to stand up and they have to give their reasons and they have to stick to time and they have to hit their notes and they, you know, they have to be clear and concise and, you know, there's a massive skill there as well.

So it's a fantastic organisation.

You just can pull so much out of it.

I did have some ideas to be fair.

I kind of knew roughly where I was going, but the burn supper sort of took over life a little bit.

So yeah, I think, there was there was definitely things that like if you couldn't you couldn't do that all right I couldn't do that like again and again you couldn't do that for like five years straight you would just have like nothing left and I think the week after the AGM it was it was really kind of it was weird like I was tired but we were still doing stuff and then like I think because you don't feel like you're you're not finished because I feel like we really we made massive leaps and bounds last year for the big build but the building's not up yet I'm still on board I'm still on SLT and like until that until that building is there and it's at angleson and i walk through the door like i still there's still a bit of me that feels like we're not done here so we will keep going but i definitely think i've had sort of maybe a couple of months probably not into may but sort of like june july um it's particularly after the highland show and i knew that the Sort of that kind of time to probably a few, a couple of weeks, two, three weeks ago, I was sort of like, just almost like had like a, not a break, but just like a little bit of a step back and I let things play out.

And now then we had a board meeting and stuff last week and now I'm like, right, okay, we're back on it.

Just seeing how, how wide a reach we could make.

The Highland Show is a huge thing, and we're competing against other events on at the Highland Show, and it's hard.

But to see everybody come together like that was very proud.

I was like, "Yeah." And I think from then you're like, "Yeah, we're definitely onto something.

So as long as we keep doing what everybody would like us to do and what they would like to learn, then I think we are on the right track.

What does a supportive network actually look like you, look like for you in practice then, Rebecca?

Just form a, forming a community of ladies that at the end of the day, like they can come to the Highland Show, to our drinks reception, have a laugh, and you can see them relax, and they're away from the farm.

They're meeting other ladies in wa- different walks of life because, yes, we are all farmers, but we're all different walks of life-